Ebenezer Scrooge
Ebenezer Scrooge is the main antihero-turned-protagonist of the classic Charles Dickens novel A Christmas Carol. He is played by Jim Carrey in the 2009 Disney version. Carrey also played the 3 ghosts and The Grinch. In the 1970 movie Scrooge, he was played by the late Albert Finney, who also played Edward Bloom, Oliver Warbucks and Hercule Poirot. Biography The story of A Christmas Carol starts on Christmas Eve in 1843, with Scrooge at his money-lending business. Dickens refers to Scrooge as "... a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!" Among his many flaws, he despises Christmas as a "humbug", and subjects his clerk, Bob Cratchit, to grueling hours at low pay. On Christmas Eve day, he rudely refuses his nephew Fred's Christmas dinner invitation, and turns away two charitable workers seeking donations for the poor. While he is preparing to go to bed, he is visited by the ghost of his business partner, Jacob Marley, who had died seven years earlier on Christmas Eve. Like Scrooge, Marley had spent his life hoarding his wealth and exploiting the poor, and as a result is damned to walk the Earth for eternity bound in the chains of his own greed. Marley warns Scrooge that he risks meeting the same fate, and that as a final chance at redemption he will be visited by three spirits of Christmas: Past, Present, and Future. The Ghost of Christmas Past takes Scrooge to see his time as a schoolboy and young man. These visions reveal that Scrooge was a lonely child whose unloving father sent him away to a boarding school. (In some film adaptations of the story, the ghost explains that Scrooge's mother died giving birth to him, for which his father blamed him.) His one solace was his beloved younger sister Fan, who repeatedly begged their father to allow Scrooge to return home, and he at last relented. Fan later died giving birth to her son, Fred. The spirit then takes him to see another Christmas a few years later in which he enjoyed a Christmas party held by his kind-hearted boss, Mr. Fezziwig. Then, the spirit shows him a Christmas in which his fiancée, Belle, leaves him as she realizes his love for money has replaced his love for her. Finally, the spirit shows him a Christmas Eve several years later, in which Belle is happily married to another man. Scrooge is then visited by the Ghost of Christmas Present, who shows him the whole of London celebrating Christmas, including Fred and the impoverished Cratchit family. When Scrooge expresses concern for Cratchit's sickly son Tiny Tim, the spirit informs him that the boy will die unless something changes and uses Scrooge's earlier words about "decreasing the surplus population" against him. The spirit then produces two misshapen, sickly children he names Ignorance and Want. When Scrooge asks if they have anyone to care for them, the spirit throws more of Scrooge's own words back in his face: "Are there no prisons, no workhouses?" The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows Scrooge Christmas Day one year later. Just as the previous spirit predicted, Tiny Tim has died; his father could not afford to give him proper care on his small manager salary. The spirit then shows Scrooge scenes related to the death of a "wretched man": His business associates snicker about how it's likely to be a cheap funeral and one associate will only go if lunch is provided, his possessions are stolen and sold by his housekeeper, undertaker and laundress, and a young couple who owed the man money are relieved he is dead, as they have more time to pay off their debt. The spirit then shows Scrooge the man's tombstone: it bears Scrooge's name. Scrooge weeps over his own grave, begging the spirit for a chance to change his ways, before awakening to find it is Christmas morning. He immediately repents and becomes a model of generosity and kindness: He visits Fred, gives Cratchit a raise, and becomes like "a second father" to Tiny Tim. As the final narration states, "Many laughed to see this alteration in him, but he let them laugh and little heeded them, for he knew that no good thing in this world ever happened, at which some did not have their fill of laughter. His own heart laughed and that was quite enough for him. And it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well if any man alive possessed the knowledge." Personality As a person, Scrooge comes off as being cold, arrogant, grumpy, shrewd, cynical, stingy, cheap, miserly and even heartless which can all be traced back to his miserably loveless childhood. He is particular obsessed with money, barely able to depart with two tuppence without forcing himself to and even taking the coins from his dead friends corpse, highlighting how little respect he has. He was so cold-hearted that he refused to give a morsel to charity as apparently "{he} can't afford to make {himself} merry and couldn't afford to make idle people merry.' Scrooge seems to have developed somewhat a misanthropic side, claiming that he cannot be happy "in a world of fools such as this one" and refused to give to charity if it would have "decreased this surplus population". However despite this he was on good terms with his longtime friend and business partner, Jacob Marley and became even more heartless if that was possible. He hated children as well, or even more, describing two younglings as "delinquents" while they were skating across the ice upon the road. This hatred was shared with children to Scrooge as well whom they desperately tried to avoid and even falling silent in his presence. Scrooge also abused his own family as well, ignoring his nephew, who loved Chritmas wheras he hated the holiday, when he tried to invite him by rudely dissing him off. Scrooge was a reserved, solitary man who had no friends and lived by himself in his own manor house, he dressed in a very sophisticated manner but was also capable of being furious such as screaming to his nephew "GOOD AFTERNOON" to make him leave however most of the time he is quite cool-tempered. He can come off as being slightly melodramatic, such as when he dropped his keys and asked himself "why does everything seem to happen to me?" Before screaming helplessly when his door-knocker became the face of Marley and actually falls over screaming on his back. However what really defines Scrooge's perosonality is his contempt for the holiday of Christmas, describing it as a "bah humbug" and him feeling no excitement or joy for the day itself. However when he was visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come, it began to affect Scrooge's personality. After being forced to relive his abandonment by his cold-hearted father, and his beloved sister dying before giving birth to his Nephew Fred, then his kind-hearted boss, Mr Fezziwig died and finally when his fiancé left him after she discovered that Scrooge's love of money overpowered his love of her, all leaving him heartbroken and depressed. Along this journey of his own morality, Scrooge began to feel immense built for his worker, Bob Cratchit's son, Tiny Tim dying because he did not give to charity and later when he came face to face with his own grave who remained unloved by all. After this entire endeavor Scrooge is transformed into a more jovial and generous person, even buying a turkey for Cratchit's family and finally accepting the invitation to dine with his Nephew Fred. He then proceeded to raise Bob Cratchit's salary and did everything in his might to help Tiny Tim and became a second father towards him, bringing Christmas cheer wherever he went. 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